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I recently upgraded to Windows 10, and am having problems with Explorer. The left side of the Explorer pane is filled with a number of shortcuts that amount to clutter that I must sift through to actually get to anything I am looking for.
Currently, when I open explorer, there is a "Quick Access" heading that includes about eight items. This is followed by a "Desktop" category that includes my username followed by another dozen or so items, followed by a "This PC" category with yet again another eight or so items, which finally includes the path to the local drives.
In order to get to the local drive, I have to scroll down the left side about a screen and a half to access the first hard drive.
The structure of this left side requires met to keep the "Desktop" portion open to access the hard drive.
Many of these apparent shortcuts are duplicates that keep showing up in each group. In example, "Documents" and "Downloads" appear in each major grouping for a total of 3 times.
Is there a way to clean out this mess on the left side so I can actually get to the local hard drives?
Alternatively, can I change the shortcuts to something more useful to me?
Examples of the many items included in the left-side menu are shown below:
AppData
Contacts
Desktop
Documents
Downloads
Favorites
Links
Music
My Documents
OneDrive
Pictures
Recent
Saved Games
Searches
Videos
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Answer accepted by question author
Hi JGreg,
Open Windows File Explorer
On the View Tab (Ribbon) click Options
At the top of the resulting dialog, set 'Open File Explorer to' to This PC rather than Quick Access
Uncheck the two checkboxes in the Privacy section (show recently used files and folders in Quick Access)
Click Apply and OK
Close and reopen File Explorer - it should now look like the File Explorer we all expect to see . . .
Hi JGreg,
Those links to your Library folders cannot be moved or removed, Microsoft does not provide a method to do this and there is not even a Registry hack that will do that . . .
One last item...
Under the "This PC", there are a number of folders before the drives are listed:
Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Videos, etc.
These seem to be shortcuts to these various folders, however I cannot find a way to remove them from the list.
I would like the local drives to be listed at the top.
Is there any way to remove these shortcuts to these unused folders?
Open Start, type: file explorer options
Select the General tab
Under Privacy, click Clear
Also, click Restore Defaults
Click Apply then ok
Thank you both for your response! The solution works well!
